Monday, March 1, 2010

Thanks to all who submitted charts for the chart of the week contest. After getting off to a slow start, I was somewhat skeptical that my idea of opening up the chart of the week to readers would turn out as I had hoped, but when over two dozen submissions landed in my inbox, I was humbled by the breadth and depth of the body of work they represented.

Alas there can only be one gold medal and this time around (I’m sure I will do this again), the winner is Amir from Las Vegas.

Amir’s chart shows how using the CBOE’s total put to call ratio (CPC) could have been helpful in identifying tops and bottoms in the S&P 500 index during the course of the last year. The areas highlighted in yellow show that the total put to call ratio (which summarizes put and call activity for individual equities plus indices) spiking to extreme levels during the June-July 2009 low and just last month dropping to the lowest level in several years. Clearly last month's signal was an excellent time to trade on the short side, at least for the short-term. Whether the extreme reading turns out to be a harbinger of a much steeper downturn remains to be seen.

My personal bias is to use the ISEE and CPCE (equity only) put to call data, but any one of these indicators is capable of generating excellent short-term to long-term market timing signals.

Thanks to all who submitted charts for the chart of the week contest. After getting off to a slow start, I was somewhat skeptical that my idea of opening up the chart of the week to readers would turn out as I had hoped, but when over two dozen submissions landed in my inbox, I was humbled by the breadth and depth of the body of work they represented.

Alas there can only be one gold medal and this time around (I’m sure I will do this again), the winner is Amir from Las Vegas.

Amir’s chart shows how using the CBOE’s total put to call ratio (CPC) could have been helpful in identifying tops and bottoms in the S&P 500 index during the course of the last year. The areas highlighted in yellow show that the total put to call ratio (which summarizes put and call activity for individual equities plus indices) spiking to extreme levels during the June-July 2009 low and just last month dropping to the lowest level in several years. Clearly last month's signal was an excellent time to trade on the short side, at least for the short-term. Whether the extreme reading turns out to be a harbinger of a much steeper downturn remains to be seen.

My personal bias is to use the ISEE and CPCE (equity only) put to call data, but any one of these indicators is capable of generating excellent short-term to long-term market timing signals.

Purpose of this Blog

The intent of this blog is to educate, inform and entertain readers, while also serving as an archived learning laboratory of sorts as I try to sharpen my thinking in areas such as volatility, market sentiment, and technical analysis. I also enjoy charging off on tangents and hope that readers may find some illumination or at least amusement in these forays.

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About Me

Chief Investment Officer at Luby Asset Management LLC in Tiburon, California. Previously worked as a full-time trader/investor and also a business strategy consultant. Education includes a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.
Useless trivia: I once broke the world pogo stick jumping record without knowing it.